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1. Fall Out Boy–My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark—I never really got into Fall Out Boy–they were one of many American bands that came out in the first half of the 2000’s that I (fairly or unfairly) labeled as lame alternative ripoffs. Or to put it in a slightly different way, when the teen pop thing started to fizzle, I felt like these bands were ladled to millennials as their serious wild music that says things, when it’s really commercial and emotionally shallow. They broke up apparently, but now are back together and sending out a really confusing message. So they blew up all their old albums in a bonfire in the same place where the disco sucks record burnings started. Why? I don’t know, maybe it’s about “saving rock n’ roll” which is the tour they are starting right now. Why is he referencing an event that happened before he was born? You do know that the disco bonfires were started by radio DJs as publicity stunts right? Also it’s not like rock music got really good once disco died–it more was eaten by MTV. Anyway the song kind of rips off all the corporate hair metal of the late 80’s and shows their stuff being burned in a bonfire. Weirdly enough, even though the song is kinda pseudo-epic, and the message is totally off, I find the act to be ballsy–I mean, he’s saying he’s going to save rock and roll, certainly a way to get people to pay attention to you. I’m just worried that he’ll save Rock N’ Roll by becoming something lame like Bon Jovi, then doing anything cool or clever.

2. Touch and Go, Lisa Gardner–“This is the truth: Love, safety, family . . . it’s all touch and go.” I don’t even know what that tagline means. Touch and go is a saying that I would use on someone struggling to stay alive, or barely keeping on, and this story of a family being stolen doesn’t have to do that at all. Maybe she means that those things are always at risk. This book is a big fat turn-off for me, because it so french-kisses suburban values and feeds on suburban fears that it just bugs me. Keep in mind I’m not knocking suburban living–every place has its own way of life and there’s a lot of reasons to choose whatever life you have, but why, if you were so much into that, would you read something so calculated to make the things you work so hard for seem threatened? There’s no such thing as a risk free life, and the one big fallacy I see in suburban thinking is that the presence of a risk is equal to the presence of a threat. And yes, you can take the story as the “evils that can lurk under the facades of a perfect family” but the message is still, everyone’s a threat, dangers lurk everywhere, hide away, play it safe, stay with the herd, and buy stuff.

3. Identity Thief–Sigh–I really want to like Jason Bateman, Arrested Development and all, but this movie if it had anybody else in it, I wouldn’t even glance at twice much less consider watching. My problem is that Jason Bateman as a movie character is quickly turning into the uptight stick-in-the-mud crotchety character that desperately needs to learn to lighten up. That’s what he plays in every single movie. It’s getting tedious. Smart Jason Bateman, I know you’re still there somewhere–please come back! We need you.

Ok America, each of these three things are understandable bad choices. I don’t mind that you made them, I do want you to learn from them. Now go to your room and think about this.